Skip links

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992,) fully Friedrich August von Hayek, was an Austrian-born British free-market economist and social philosopher. Noted for his criticisms of the Keynesian welfare state and of totalitarian socialism, he was a leading advocate of the free market. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in economic science with the Swedish welfare economist Gunnar Myrdal, whose views were almost directly the opposite of Hayek’s.

Born in Vienna, Hayek was a product of the anti-Marxist Austrian School of liberal economics. He became director of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research 1927–31. He lectured at Vienna 1929–31 and was appointed Professor of Economic Science at London School of Economics 1931–50.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was greatly influenced by Hayek’s ideas of personal liberty and market economics and based many of her government’s conservative policies upon her interpretation of his concepts.

The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.—Friedrich Hayek

The more state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.—Friedrich Hayek

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions…. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Responsibility

It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made man submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Civilization

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one.—Friedrich Hayek

With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Economics

Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Responsibility

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Equality

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.—Friedrich HayekTopics: Difficulty

With every grant of security to one group the insecurity of the rest necessarily increases.—Friedrich Hayek

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order—Friedrich HayekTopics: Equality

It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people—Friedrich Hayek

…the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend—Friedrich HayekTopics: Actors

Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of a higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes which horrify us follow of necessity. From the collectivist standpoint, intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential and unavoidable consequences of this basic premise; and the collectivist can admit this and at the same time claim that his system is superior to one in which the—Friedrich HayekTopics: Individuality